


(Don't forget to) Breathe.

by Pixilated



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Alive Allison, Alive Laura, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Derek and Stiles are Mates, Derek is a Failwolf, Derek is a Good Alpha, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Human Isaac, Hurt Isaac, Hurt Stiles, I promise, M/M, Minor Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Minor Ethan/Danny Mahealani, Minor Lydia Martin/Jackson Whittemore, Minor Melissa McCall/Sheriff Stilinski, Minor Vernon Boyd/Erica Reyes, Oblivious Stiles, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining Derek, The Author Regrets Nothing, WIP, all the feels, not abandoned forever
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:44:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3905200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixilated/pseuds/Pixilated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is unaware he is Derek's mate and leaves for college after one night with the man who has held his heart for years.</p><p>Or</p><p>In which both Stiles and Derek are idiots and could have avoided a whole lot of manpain and emotional constipation by just talking to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first piece of fanfic, though I have worshipped the good ship Sterek for a couple of years now. 
> 
> This is unbetad and all mistakes are my own. Characters and cannon events have been cherry picked and altered to suit me because this is AU and I want everything my way. 
> 
> Some characters will be onscreen, some off screen, and some won't be showing up for a while. 
> 
> If you spot anything that needs tagging or grammar/spelling stuff please let me know. With this being my first fic it is all new to me.
> 
> Title comes from a song called Breathe, by Alexi Murdoch. 
> 
> Now, on with it!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the song the title comes from. Hope the link works! Of it doesn't, just copy/paste it.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_naIQOVUaM&app=desktop

Waking up alone in bed was the final straw. His bags were already packed, but he thought the night before might have changed things.

Painfully—because holy _crap_ , who knew how much sex would hurt the day after—Stiles stretched before he was really awake yet. Ow, ow, and ow. Yeah, that woke him up. Stretching equals bad idea. Legs and ass, he could understand why they felt wrecked, but why the hell did his freaking arms hurt?

  
But then he remembered clinging to Derek, pulling him closer, pulling him in so tightly while he slid in and out of Stiles for what had felt like hours. Slick skin that dripped with sweat and tasted of salt and smelled of them together. Grunts and breathy, choked off groans in Stiles ears when Derek finally, finally went rigid against him, pulsed inside him. Derek’s hand on Stiles’ aching cock moments later and the white hot bliss that flooded through him.

  
Stiles reached out blindly, but the sheets next to him were cold. He cracked an eye open and quickly closed it again. Shit, why was it so bright? Oh. Those stupidly enormous, curtain free windows letting the sun in to try and blind him. He turned over, which again, ow, and buried his face in a pillow. He lay there for a few moments with something niggling at his brain. What the hell was it? And where was Derek? He really needed to talk to Derek before he left town. He had been going to tell him the night before, been going to say goodbye, but had never gotten the chance.

  
Derek wasn’t in the loft, the place was far too quiet for that. It felt empty. Still, there was a chance he was in the living area or the kitchen or something. Maybe he was getting breakfast. There were no food or coffee smells though and Derek liked his coffee. Everyone had stayed over here enough times after battling the latest beastie or other threat to the pack for Stiles to have noticed—I mean how could he not? Stiles was very aware of everything Derek did and had been for some time—Derek’s addiction to the bitter, heaven-sent brew. It was an addiction Stiles shared. So no, Derek wasn’t in the loft. Had he gone out for breakfast?

  
Wait. The sun?

  
The sun didn’t come in through that window in the morning. The sun shouldn’t be around that side of the building until at least midday. What the hell was the time?

  
Unwilling to move, again, all that much, Stiles brought his arm up and peered blearily at his watch.

  
Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_. His dad was going to go mental. One o’clock? How was it one o’clock?

  
The adrenaline jolt to his system, kindly provided by the panic at realising how late he was, got him moving better than the coffee he had started craving, when trying to sniff out if Derek was lurking with a cup, a minute before. He tried to get out of bed only to fall in a flailing pile of limbs to the floor, tangled in the stupid covers.

  
Stiles might be twenty years old and about to go off for his final year at University but his dad still scared the pants off him when he was pissed. Not that his dad got that angry very often these days, not now him and Melissa had stopped dancing around each other two years before when his dad got shot.

  
He crawled around on the floor hunting for his boxers. Where the fuck were they? They had come off in the bedroom, right? There! He spotted a piece of fabric over the arm of a chair and stood to go get them, hobbling slightly. How the hell did they get halfway across the damn room? Socks? Socks? Fuck the socks. He staggered out of the bedroom. Moving was still a little painful but getting easier. Would have been nice to be able to take his time and actually enjoy the feelings left in his body by the night before. He snatched up his tee from the floor outside the bedroom, pulling it on as he went to find his jeans and trainers in the living area.

  
A piece of paper fluttered to the floor as he yanked his jeans up over his hips. He glanced down, shoving his bare feet into his trainers while he buttoned his jeans. The paper had Derek’s bold print on but there wasn’t time to read it. Stiles grabbed it after hooking a finger into the back of each trainer so he could pull them over his heels and shoved it into his pocket to read later. He slammed out the door at a run, patting his pockets to make sure he had his keys. He got his phone out as he approached his jeep and—fuck!—fourteen missed calls. There was one text.

 _ **DAD** : Where in god’s name are you? We’re at the restaurant. Show the fuck up or I’ll turn your bedroom into a home gym while you’re away_.

  
“Sorry! I’m sorry,” Stiles blurted out, already talking as he approached the table where his dad, Melissa, Scott, and Allison waited. If looks could kill he would be dead. Sooo freaking dead. Yup, his dad was pissed. He lowered his voice as he slid into an empty chair so no one at the other tables would overhear. “Pack stuff. Derek wanted me to research some stuff for him before I left. It got pretty late and I crashed there. Forgot to set my phone. So, um, I’m sorry?” He smiled anxiously at his dad, inwardly pleading for his story to be accepted. He had had to come up with something on the way from the loft to the restaurant and that had been the best he could think of.

  
Oh fuck. He glanced at Scott who stared at him in vague wide-eyed horror, nose wrinkling. He could probably smell Derek all over him. And sex. Yeah, he would definitely be able to smell the sex. All the sex. Stiles manfully controlled a shiver. He was helpless against the arousal though as he more things came back to him from the night before. He silently begged Scott not to say anything and looked back at his dad.

His dad grumbled out something not quite verbal, but Melissa reached for his hand, where it lay on the table, and gave it a squeeze. Somehow the five of them had become a family over the last couple of years, despite him and Scott not being quite as close friends as they used to be. Stiles would miss them all when he went off to college.

He hadn’t thought leaving would be this hard. When his dad got shot and Stiles applied to be transferred to Berkley’s pilot program and then got accepted, he had put going away to college behind him—no matter how much he had once wanted it. He had given up his dorm room and stayed in his childhood bedroom. Given up lecture halls, frat parties, and college lacrosse for lectures via the internet from a camera in each hall he would have otherwise sat in, nights in studying, and helping his dad re-learn how to walk. Two years later, seeing his dad walking on his own two feet, albeit with a cane, was worth every moment.

But his dad didn’t need him, not now he was walking again and with Melissa around. The last bullet fragment had been removed from his spine and the doctors and surgeons had pronounced him as fit and well as he would get. Stiles could finally leave and spend his last college year actually at college. It didn’t feel like spreading his wings anymore, though, more like being kicked out of the nest. He wanted to stay and look after his dad some more. Why would he want to go off somewhere new and have to make a whole new bunch of friends when he liked the ones he already had, Boyd and Erica, Lydia and even Jackson when the two of them were home for the holidays, Scott's new beta Liam, hell, even Deaton. He could finish his degree the way he had completed his first two years. God, he wanted to talk to Derek.

By the time everyone’s food arrived and they began eating, conversation was flowing. Scott managed to knock Allison’s red wine all over the white tablecloth and into Stiles’s lap. Luckily the glass had only been half full but the dark liquid still managed to soak into his jeans enough that he felt damp and kinda gross. Melissa closed her eyes briefly and sighed.

“I thought being a werewolf was supposed to make you more coordinated, Scotty, enhance your reflexes.” Stiles tossed a bread roll at Scott, which he caught easily.

“Yeah, yeah, like you can talk,” Scott shot back.

“I can. I can talk a lot. Seriously, dude, what do you want me to talk about? I’m sure there is plenty Allison here doesn’t know about you yet. What about that time in the sandbox at old Mrs Mason’s house when she babysat us and you—“

“Don’t you dare!”

Allison stopped trying to hide her grin behind her hair and perked up, interested.

“Or what you looked up when you got your first computer. You—“

“Stiles!”

Melissa turned to look at her son with narrowed eyes.

“Does Allison know what your passwords are?”

“Stiles! Come on, man.”

“I’m just sayin’. Never say I can’t talk. I’ve always got plenty to talk about. Plenty.”

Scott’s mouth spread in an unusually evil smirk. “Oh yeah? What about all those werewolf senses of mine. You know they got enhanced just as much as my reflexes.” He lobbed the bread roll back at Stiles, who fumbled it onto the table. “More even. I mean, I can pick up all sorts of stuff I couldn’t before. I can hear lies. I can smell… _everything_.” Scott looked at Stiles, nostrils flaring and head tilting slightly, scenting him.

He wouldn’t…

“Okay, okay, peace. Let’s not get into all that now,” Stiles said, desperate to stop whatever was about to come out of Scott’s mouth. He wouldn’t tell everyone he spent the night _with_ Derek, right? He wouldn’t do that, right? _Right_? “Wow, this steak sure is something, huh? Make the most of yours, Dad. Melissa has my diet sheets for you, it’s back to green beans and tofu tomorrow.”

“I’m a grown man, Stiles.”

“And I want you to stay that way. A healthy, alive, grown man, with no more heart problems.”

“Gonna miss you, kiddo.”

 

After lunch was over, Scott and Allison hugged Stiles and went back to their respective jobs. He was under orders to text them when he arrived safely and to stay in touch. After getting changed and loading his car up, he got the same order from his dad and a tight, motherly hug from Melissa. Berkeley was only a few hours away so he should be there long before nightfall.

Pulling over just outside the town limits so he could text Derek, he remembered the note. Stiles opened the bag with his wine-wet jeans and withdrew the soggy scrap of paper from the pocket. He had totally forgotten about the note in his earlier rush.

Not much of it was readable, only a couple of words. _Can’t_ _do_ _this_ near the start and _talk_ near the end. The rest was a blur of run ink and red wine.

Stiles swallowed hard. He didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what Derek had tried to tell him. He couldn’t do this with Stiles and didn’t want to talk about it. Why else leave a note like that and disappear.

He crumpled the note up into a wet little ball and tossed it into the passenger foot well. Fine. If Derek didn’t want him, Stiles wouldn’t pester him with his needy, messy emotions. Stiles would carry on to Berkeley and stay out of Derek’s life.

Stiles turned up the radio and ignored the hollow feeling in his chest.


	2. Chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are amazing! I cant believe how many hits and kudos my little story has already.  
> I still have no clue what to call this yet, so if anyone has any ideas for a title then comment away at the end. Also, please let me know any spelling/grammar/story mistakes you spot that drive you crazy. I am used to finishing a whole story and editing it several times before putting it out there but am just too impatient with this one so am posting as I go. 
> 
> Smooches!

Chapter two

 

Derek couldn’t remember ever being so happy, waking with stiles in his arms. He normally went from sleep to awake between one heartbeat and the next, instantly on alert. But that morning he roused slowly. His mate was with him, finally, and his wolf didn’t feel the need to be wary and watchful. Stiles curled into, and yes ok drooled on, his chest with his mouth slightly open and huffing out warm puffs of air. His wolf pretty much purred in relaxed contentment as if it were a dog in front of a fire, basking in his mate's presence. Derek pressed his nose into Stiles hair and inhaled deeply. Citrusy and sharp like Stiles’s personality, with woodsy, comforting undertones. He had smelled his mate before, of course. He had been familiar with his scent for a long time, but never _bathed_ in it like he could now, never let it roll over and sink into him like a drug. Stiles lay half on top of Derek’s chest and their legs tangled together. Stiles's shoulder dug into Derek’s arm, which was now numb, but Derek hadn’t the slightest desire to move.

Despite feeling as though he had everything he ever wanted handed to him, or maybe because of it, he couldn’t escape the niggling feeling lurking in the back of his mind that it would all be snatched away. He pulled Stiles in closer.

He dozed on and off, thinking about how they had gotten to this point.

 

**

_Laura hadn’t checked in for a week. She was supposed to call, leaving a message if he didn’t answer, at least once every twenty four hours. By the time four days had gone by with nothing from her he had been in a full blown panic and left New York, taking off for Beacon Hills as fast as he could. While he could have made the drive in one stretch, he hadn’t wanted to be completely useless to her once he got there so had stopped off on the way to get some sleep a couple of times. Even being a were could only keep you going for so long._

_Arriving in town around nine in the evening, Derek had set about scouring the place, hunting for some sign of his sister’s whereabouts. Her most recent scent had been days old and at the high school. So, after an uncomfortable night in the burned out wreck of their childhood home with only memories of his dead family for company, he had gone back the next day._

_That was when he had seen him. Stiles. It was Stiles’s scent he had caught first. Sharp, sweet, and fresh at the same time, like the forest in spring, wood sap and citrus fruit. His wolf had howled and battered at his control to go claim their mate, but the boy was too young to claim, too oblivious to the world of the supernatural all around him, and too beautiful to put in harm’s way. He was all flailing limbs, pale skin dotted with moles, and vivid energy and it had drawn Derek like a magnet._

_Every night after that Derek had spent hours looking for Laura before giving in and allowing his wolf to carry them to the house where the boy lived. The sight of him sleeping peacefully was the only good thing in his life just then. His scent. Hearing him breathe. Derek curled up on the roof and got a couple of hours sleep before dawn broke and sent him back to the burned out wreck where his family had died so he could wait out the day and the cycle started again._

_By the time Derek threw the boys off his land he had seen Stiles forty-six times. If you could count sitting outside his bedroom and watching him sleep seeing him. If you didn’t, then it was only twice. This time in the woods and the first time. The one when he had only just arrived back in town. Seeing him there at the house had thrown Derek. He hadn’t meant to be so horrible to the boys but he had been scared for their safety and overreacted. He couldn’t let anything happen to Stiles. Not ever._

_But then Scott had been bitten and Stiles thrown headlong into it all anyway. His uncle Peter’s insanity on waking from his coma, Peter dying and coming back again, the kanima, finally finding Laura in the hands of the psychotic bitch who had killed their family, finding Peter’s wife and the child he hadn’t known about because it had been born after Peter had been in the coma along with Laura, killing Kate, Peter and Olivia leaving town to start new somewhere else, Laura’s recovery, Derek’s new Betas Erica and Boyd, Scott’s will-he-won’t-he join the pack and eventual decision to join them, the alpha pack, the darach, the nemeton. Most recently, Laura had gotten wind of a girl who might be their sister, Cora, and taken off to go find her. Neither of them had any clue how Cora might have survived the fire, or why she hadn’t stayed close by after it for them to find. God, it was like they stumbled from one disaster to the next with barely room to breathe. And Stiles was there for all of it, jumping in with both feet and not a care for his own safety, though Derek had to admit, Stiles had saved all of them, Derek included, on multiple occasions._

_Wanting Stiles to have options, Derek hadn’t talked to him about being mates. Stiles was so young when they met and he needed time to grow up, time to experience life, go to college, and see what he wanted out of life before Derek could broach the subject with him._

_Then the Sheriff got shot and Stiles’s life changed again. He stopped hanging around them all so much, focussed on his studies, and looked after his dad. He still did research for them, but stopped coming to pack meetings and fighting whatever monster turned up in town. Stiles was actually safe for a change, but Derek missed him. He didn’t get to see him nearly as much and they rarely talked. So when Stiles had turned up on his doorstep and stared at him with those huge eyes, obviously trying to find a way to say something, Derek had snapped._

_He didn’t know who had made the first move, but suddenly they had been kissing and he had Stiles pinned against the back of the door to his loft, hiked up in his arms with Stiles legs wrapped around his waist. Shoes and other pieces of clothing had been tossed aside in the urgent race for skin against skin and somehow they had managed to make it as far as Derek's bed. Stiles’s pale skin flushed pink with arousal, his soft, barely there, open mouthed gasp when Derek slid inside him, the noises he made as they writhed together all slick skin and straining muscle, and Stiles begging him to let him come. Please, Derek,_ please _._

_***_

 

Derek swore. He wanted to stay wrapped up in his mate but his damn phone was warbling away, demanding he take notice of a new text message, and he didn’t want it to wake Stiles up.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for abandoning this fic! writing has been a struggle for a long time and I have had to put any writing energies I manage to drum up into my original fiction. I do intend to come back to this eventually and have a lot more planned out for this story.

Blah blah blah. it wont let me post this without something here. I promise to come back to this fic eventually!


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